Sea Spell (Waterfire Saga #4)(49)

Mahdi had asked her to come to him—alone. That was risky. He knew that, but he’d asked anyway. That told her there was trouble, real trouble. He didn’t know that there was no longer a traitor in the Black Fins’ camp. A conch had been sent to him telling him the spy had been caught…but if he’d been traveling to the Karg all this time, he wouldn’t have received it.

Vallerio’s forces must be close, she thought. Mahdi will know how close.

“I’m going to him. Right now,” Sera said to the scorpion, as she pocketed the conch. “Can you show me the way?”

The scorpion nodded.

Sera shot off toward the cave that housed the hippokamps. It was a fair distance to the Darktide Shallows and would take her half a day to swim it. She would ride a hippokamp there instead, and speed the animal along with a velo spell.

The scorpion could not keep up. When Sera realized she’d left him far behind, she doubled back.

“Climb up,” she said, holding out her arm. The creature latched on to her, then crawled to her shoulder, steadying himself with his tail. “You good?” she asked.

He nodded and she took off again.

To her relief, the hippokamps had been bedded down for the night. No grooms were around.

Sera cast an illuminata. An accomplished equestrienne, she picked out a strong white mare, put the animal on crossties, and tacked her up. When she was finished, she scrawled a hasty note.


I’ve gone to see a friend. Back by morning.

Serafina



Then she unclipped the crossties, led the hippokamp out of the cave, and climbed on. The scorpion settled itself in front of her so he could point the way.

Sera spurred her mount and cast a velo. A split second later, she and the scorpion were racing out of camp, a white blur in the dark water.





SERA DIDN’T LOOK BACK as the camp fell away behind her.

She and the scorpion rode for hours without stopping, her illuminata lighting their way. Pointing with his claw, the scorpion led Sera across the Kargjord, over the Devil’s Trench, through shimmering shoals of mackerel and cod, and then down into the weedy shallows themselves.

“Over there!” he chittered now, pointing ahead.

Sera looked past his pincers and spotted Mahdi floating in a hollow. He was turned away from her, but she could see his black jacket, his long hair pulled back into a hippokamp’s tail, and the side of his handsome face. He was holding something; it looked like a Black Fin jacket.

He was here for the wrong reason. He was here because he was in grave danger. And she was, too. And so was everyone and everything they cared about.

But still, Sera was wildly happy to see him.

“Mahdi!” she called out. She was off her hippokamp in an instant, speeding to him.

He turned around. Sera caught his beautiful face in her hands and kissed him, but his lips were cold.

“Mahdi?”

He smiled at her. But instead of warming her, it chilled her. It was a lunatic’s grin—too wide, too bright.

He dropped the jacket. His hands closed on her arm with a tight grip. Scared now, Sera tried to pull away, but his fingers curled painfully into her flesh, and she knew she’d made a terrible mistake.

“Who are you?” she cried, whipping her dagger out of her belt. “Let me go!”

The maligno knocked the weapon away. She fought hard, slapping at the creature with her free hand, slamming it with her tail. In the struggle, her pocket tore, and the message conch fell out. She heard her hippokamp whinny in fear; then the creature bolted.

The scorpion, meanwhile, had circled behind her. He swam toward her now, his tail raised, its sharp tip glistening with poison.

When the strike came, the pain was unlike anything Sera had ever known.

The scorpion’s barb sank deep into her back, just missing her spine. A heartbeat later, the venom was in her bloodstream. It felt like lava moving through her veins.

She tried to scream, but no sound came out. The venom had paralyzed her. Her breathing slowed. Her heart rate dropped.

All she could do was watch in terror, eyes frozen open, as the thing that wasn’t Mahdi picked her up and dragged her away.





“ANY SIGN OF HER?” Becca called out anxiously, her heart heavy with dread.

“Nothing yet,” Ling shouted back.

The two mermaids, together with Neela, Desiderio, Yazeed, Coco, and Coco’s shark, Abelard, had been searching for Sera in the Darktide Shallows for over three hours. They’d ridden out of camp before dawn, after it was discovered that Serafina was nowhere to be found.

Neela, busy with Sera’s uniform, had continued to work for several hours the previous night. When she finally went to the barracks to sleep, she saw that Sera’s bunk was empty. She went to look for Des, thinking maybe they’d never gone to sleep and were sitting by a waterfire somewhere, but he was in his barracks.

Worried, she and Des had raised the alarm. Word of Sera’s disappearance spread quickly through the camp. A goblin named Regelbrott had hurried to headquarters just after the news broke.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” she said, “so I left my barracks and went for a walk around camp. Someone streaked by on a white hippokamp. I saw a tail, so it was a mer, not a goblin, but I didn’t see the rider’s face.”

“Where was she heading?” Des asked.